Last Known Survivor of Lusitania Sinking Dies at 95

The last known survivor of the infamous torpedoing of the Lusitania ocean liner died today in England, the BBC reported. Audrey Lawson-Johnston was 95.

Lawson-Johnston, from Melchbourne in Bedfordshire, England, had been hospitalized since suffering a stroke in December, her daughter Margie Clarke told the BBC.

Last known survivor of Lusitania, Audrey Lawson-Johnston, dies at 95.
PA
The Lusitania is shown sailing from New York on May 1, 1915. Six days later, the ocean liner was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland.
Born Audrey Warren Pearl, Lawson-Johnston was just 3 months old when the Lusitania, bound from New York to Liverpool, was attacked by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, off the coast of Ireland. The vessel sank just 18 minutes after being torpedoed. More than half of the 1,959 people on board were killed.

The attack on a passenger liner turned public opinion in many nations against Germany and did much to bring the U.S. into World War I.

Lawson-Johnston's family was traveling on the ship because her parents, surgeon Frederick "Frank" Warren Pearl and his wife, Amy Lea Duncan, were moving from the United States to England, according to the Lusitania Resource.

A nanny, Alice Lines, grabbed the baby Audrey and her 5-year-old brother Stuart and got them on a lifeboat. They survived, as did the children's parents. But Lawson-Johnston's two sisters, 3-year-old Amy and 15-month-old Susan, drowned along with another nanny, Greta Lorenson.

Lawson-Johnston, who is survived by three daughters and 10 grandchildren, always credited Lines with saving her life. The two kept in touch until Lines died in 1997 at the age of 100, the BBC said.

"I hope I live up to being saved," Lawson-Johnston said in an interview with the BBC in May, 95 years after the sinking.

Clarke called her mother "a remarkable woman."

"She always said, 'I was put on this earth for some reason, I was saved for some reason,' and she jolly well was.